In this contribution we are going to solve the antagonising problem on
some conflicting opinions.
In the thread "What is Leadership" some contributors maintained that only
some people are leaders. Others claimed that any person can be a leader.
Some pointed out that a distiction should be made between leaders and
leadership -- all people can be leaders, but not all people have
leadership.
We had a number of similar threads in the past on other abilities, for
example, caring (compassion) and learning (knowledge). Let us call all
such abilities (properties leading to a change) as "dynamical qualities"
and symbolise anyone by Q. Let us now summarise the problem:
Some contributors claim that all people have a certain dynamical
quality Q while the other side claims that only some people have
the dynamical quality Q. Neither side wants to give in because
that would amount to denying the truth. How is it possible? The
claim "ALL people has the dynamical quality Q" is surely
different
from "only SOME people has the dynamical quality Q".
To solve the problem we have to realise that both sides (the "ALL side"
and the "SOME side") try to articulate facts of experience. In other
words, each side toils with a fact (part of the truth). Should they try
to articulate the same fact, then we certainly have the win/lose conflict.
However, each person in each side tries to articulate his/her "tacit
knowledge" (intuition). Tacit knowledge does not have a readily
recognisable form like its emergent "formal knowledge". Thus it is very
difficult for people to compare their tacit knowledges. Yet when people
compare their formal knowledges, they each has to make sure that they are
trying to articulate the same fact. Should the "ALL side" try to
articulate a different fact than the "SOME side", then both sides are
toiling with but different parts of the truth.
Furthermore, there is no guarantee that these two parts will make up the
whole truth, especially when in the articulation the two sides do not even
succeed in showing the difference between the seemingly conflicting facts.
Hence we have a lose/lose dilemma, unless we bring in other facts (parts
of the truth) to make it a win/win victory.
What other facts are needed? All facts closely connected to the concept of
"free energy". The concept of free energy will provide us with a solution
to this seemingly irreconcileable differences in opinion about dynamical
qualities.
Think about any electrical gadget, for example, a TV set. Assume that you
own a TV. The fact that you own the TV is not equivalent (the = sign) to
the fact that you use the TV set. In other words, you own the TV whether
it is working or switched off from the electrical mains supply. Ownership
is different to workout ("workship"). But is there not perhaps some
correspondence (the == sign) between ownership and "workship"?
If you never have even plugged the TV to the mains supply and thus never
see what is happening on TV and talk about it, people will begin to assume
that you do not own a TV. Furthermore, should you tell them that although
you have bought an expensive TV, you have never made the effort to switch
it on, they will think you are crazy. Let us delve deeper into this
connection between "owning" and "working".
In some countries the supply of electricity may become very erratic
because of warfare or other kinds of retrogradation. It is then when
people begin to discover how essential a continuous supply of
electrical energy is for their electrical gadgets to function
properly.
(Think of our fellow learner Aleksander Raic in Yugoslavia.) What is
this "supply of electricity"?
All matter contains electrons. Every electron has energy. But only some
electrons in certain kinds of matter (called electrical conductors) may be
given sufficient energy with which they can perform work. This extra
electrical energy with which they can perform work while flowing through a
conductor is know as electrical potential energy. There are many other
kinds of potential energy like nuclear, gravitatational and chemical
energy. All these kinds together are called free energy. Thus
"electricity" or electrical potential energy is a kind of free energy.
The faltering supply of any kind of free energy (like electrical potential
energy) makes the ownership of tools (like electrical gadgets) a highly
questionable practice. Consider your pet tool (like the TV). You may be
the proud owner of that tool, but if you do not have a continuous source
of free energy of the kind which your tool uses (like electricity for a
TV), it is very near the same as to say that you do not own the tool!
Another example, your car is a tool for locomotion. Have you ever been
stranded with an empty fuel tank?
Of ALL those people who own a specific tool, the tool will work for only
SOME of them who have an uninterrupted supply of the kind of free energy
to make it work continuously. Hopefully the examples above have shown that
this "dynamical requirement" is of paramount importance. (The "dynamical"
pertain to content rather than form.)
But there are also "mechanical requirements". (The "mechanical" pertain
to form rather than content.) They are the seven essentialities of
creativity. For example, if you do not know (sureness) how to tune the
tool (like selecting a channel on TV), it will not funtion. If you connect
(fruitfulness) it to a wrong supply of free energy (like water in stead of
gasoline in the fuel tank of car), the tool will also not function.
Both the dynamical AND the mechanical requirements are important. We may
say that the "dynamical requirements" (such as free energy and entropy
production) are necessary and that the "mechanical requirements" (namely
the seven essentialities) ensure sufficiency. Any tool with an
insufficient source of free energy or one of the seven essentialities
impaired cannot act like a tool any more.
The dog is now going to bite its own tail.
Wholeness is another essentiality of creativity. If you do not believe
that the material world of brain and the abstract world of mind are
intimately related to each other, then press the ESC key to abort this
contribution. This contribution is intended to give you a certain tool to
work with, but if you do not accept wholeness as a
mechanical/sufficiency/formal requirement, this tool will not work
properly. However, when the physical brain and the spiritual mind becomes
one thing with merely two sides to it, we must question ourselves
thoroughly on not only the differences between physical and spiritual
tools, but also their correspondences.
A continuous supply of free energy is of paramount importance for physical
tools to work. I have used electricity and the TV as an example of an
inanimate tool. I could also have used the human body as an example of a
biological tool. Glucose and oxygen are needed to react and thus release
chemical free energy for the muscles to react. The digestive system
ensures the uptake of glucose from food into the blood system. The lungs
take up the oxygen and the pumping heart transports the blood to the
muscles. The pancrease supplies insulin which helps the glucose molecule
to move from the arteries into the individual cells through the cell
walls. If there is something wrong with the gut, lungs, heart, pancrease
or blood, the body will suffer a deficiency in chemical free energy. The
body will be less able to move.
But is a continuous supply of free energy of paramount importance for
spiritual tools to work? Problem-solving (like the other four elementary
sustainers of creativity) is a spiritual tool. Can a person solve problems
if that person do not has the free energy to do it? What do I mean when I
say that "ALL people can solve problems"? If some people do not have
problem-solving free energy, is it not the case that "only SOME people can
solve problems"? Does this "some" not pertain to a dynamical requirement?
If we also bring in the mechanical requirements into play, will it not
become "only SOME of SOME people can solve problems"? How many problems
can we solve when, for example, our wholeness is impaired by fragmentarism
(apartheid)?
So what is this "free energy"? How can we understand it? According to
wholeness, we have to trace the web of free energy where ever it takes us.
Should we avoid certain domains on that web of free energy because the
account will become too lengthy or too esoteric to our liking, then we may
again hit the ESC key. But if you want to understand free energy, get on
the bus of complexity otherwise you will stay behind.
First of all, be prepared that viewing free energy as a dynamical
requirement for BOTH physical AND spiritual tools, involves an
unprecedented paradigm shift! Traditionally, free energy was associated
only with physical tools. And even in that tradition we became accustomed
to serious misconceptions. All these misconceptions will have to be
corrected in the paradigm shift. What is a paradigm shift? It is a grand
IRREVERSIBLE transformation of the mind. Here is an example.
Free energy is always needed to perform work. We teach this to
our university students in physics and physical chemistry until
they get sick of it. We seldom show them the equation which
relates free energy F to work W, except when we have a very
REVERSIBLE situation. The equation for REVERSIBLE situations
is
/_\F = W
where /_\F indicates the change /_\ in free energy F.
Unfortunately, the REVERSIBLE situtations of physics and chemistry are
both esoteric and traditional. The esoteric means that we have to make
considerable efforts to obtain a situation even closely to reversible. In
real life ALL situations are IRREVERSIBLE -- some just more than others.
The traditional means that even most modern text books in physics and
chemistry still give an account of reversible transformations. Text books
which give an account of all transformations as irreversible, some only
less so than others, are proverbially as scarce as chicken teeth. Why?
Because the paradigm of humankind which involves free energy, entropy,
chaos and order is still shifting. Very few have made the shift and only
few are making it now. For the majority the shift still has to happen. So
what is this paradigm shift with respect to free energy?
The equation
/_\F = W
is wrong of we want to use it to reflect the whole truth. It applies
only to the REVERSIBLE transformation of systems. Such
REVERSIBLE transformations are actually IRREVERSIBLE
transformations with a minute degree of irrversibilty. We cannot
keep on with the tradition of working with only SOME changes,
i.e those who are minutely irreversible. Reality involves ALL
changes which presents a dazzling variety in degree of
IRREVERSIBILITY. For ALL IRREVERSIBLE changes the correct
equation describing the relationship between free energy F and
work W is
/_\F < W
Note the small difference, the sign = ("is equal to") becomes
replaced by the sign < ("is smaller than"). Do you want a token
for the grand paradigm shift? The
= emerging into <
may very well serve as such a token.
Picture in your mind the degree of irreversibility as the following
spectrum of formulae
/_\F = W
/_\F < W
/_\F << W
/_\F <<< W
-
-
-
The more irreversible a change becomes, the more the meaning
of the < sign becomes important.
So what is the degree of irreversibility and how is it related to
free energy? Free energy is not only needed to perform work as
tradition tells us. The new worldview tells us that free energy is
primarily needed to produce entropy. This is the basic function
of free energy. The more the entropy production, the further the
relationship between /_\F and W drifts away from the EQUATION
/_\F = W
to the ORDER RELATION
/_\F < W
Entropy production leads to an increase in entropy. The entropy of every
system is a measure of its organisation. Thus, when the total entropy of a
system and its surrounding systems increases, it measures the change in
organisation of all these systems in the universe. This organisation
increases in a complex rather than simple manner -- so much so for
simplistic explanations.
The best way is not to try INTERPRET the entropy production as has been
done traditionally, but to follow its MANIFESTATIONS. Why? Even our
interpretations, including those concerning entropy production, are
manifestations of entropy production. Even our interpretations need free
energy to happen. With too little free energy we cannot expect to
interpret universally. Remember, wholeness is at stake. The interpreter
cannot claim a different set of rules.
Entropy production is first manifested as a diversity of becoming
(processes). It is something we traditionally prefered to call chaos.
When the edge of chaos has been reached, the entropy can also be
manifested as diversity of being. It is something we traditionally
prefered to call order. But the paradigm shift implies that we should
question tradition and transform to a new world view where the traditional
view was failing. One way to formulate this shift is to say that
IRREVERSIBLE PROCESSES are far more general than FIXED STRUCTURES.
Another way to formulate it, is to say that organisation involves not only
SECONDARY ORDER, but also PRIMARY CHAOS. The transition from the CHAOS to
ORDER involves ordinate bifurcations. The past will be seen as chaos and
the future as order. The bifurcation means that with respect to the
paradigm shift itself some people will respond destructively to the shift
while others will respond constructively. You can even observe it
happening on this list.
So let us solve our problem at last.
In a physical tool like the working TV the electrical potential energy is
certainly producing entropy. Its first manifestation, namely chaos, can be
felt as the heat produced in the electrical components of the TV. The
diversity of motion of the tiny electrons and larger atoms increases --
something we sense as higher temperature (hot rather than cold). Its
second manifestation, namely order, can be seen on the screen in the
pixels exhibiting definite patterns in colour.
Think of the TV as a metaphor of any dynamical quality Q. A person may
have the dynamical quality Q, but if there is no free energy available,
the dynamical quality has become inattentive (inoperative). We buy a TV
set rather rather than construct itself. Unfortunately, we cannot buy
dynamical qualities (our spiritual tools) from the shelve like physical
tools. These spiritual tools cannot ever be sold like gadgets. This is a
major difference between them. Why cannot we buy spiritual tools of the
shelve? They, like any other dynamical quality, have to emerge from
within the system by involving a complexity of processes which are
collectively known as self-organisation.
Since we cannot buy spiritual tools like physical tools, how can we become
owners of them? As far as my own understanding goes, there is only one
option -- get them by creative learning!
A dynamical quality of a person emerges as a result of entropy production.
The entropy is produced by means of free energy. The first manifestation
is a greater diversity in the behaviour (manners) of the person. These
behaviours eventually culminate in a new dynamical quality (behaviouristic
ability) which did not exist previously. That is why we say that this
dynamical quality has emerged.
Eventhough this dynamical quality may have emerged, it still needs free
energy to perform. If there is not sufficient free energy for the
dynamical quality to be operative, we may call it an inattentive dynamical
quality. It is the same as with a TV not switched to the mains supply of
electrical potential energy. The screen is blank.
Obviously, having a mains supply of electrical potential energy, but not a
TV to switch into it, is another possibility. It is the same with a
dynamical quality which has not yet emerged. All the mental free energy
possible will not result in a certain manifold of behaviours unless the
dynamical quality for such behaviours has emerged. In other words, only
already emerged dynamical qualities can become inattentive.
Creativity is the basic dynamical quality of humans. It emerges very early
in life. As a dynamical quality it may become inattentive. Calling it
basic (elemental) means that all other dynamical qualities emerge from it.
If creatvity becomes inattentive because of one or more factors, all other
emergent dynamical qualities depending on the same factors will also
become inattentive. In others words, inattentive means that there is not
sufficient free energy to perform these dynamical qualities. The person
has to change non-spontaneous in the afflicted dynamical qualities. In
other words, a dynamical quality which has become inattentive, cannot lead
to a spontanous organisation.
The most important first order emergent of creativity is learning.
Learning may become inattentive (non-spontaenous). But deep down the
creativity itself has also become inoperative. It happens when too little
free energy for creativity is available. Thus it is most important to know
what our source of free energy for creativity are and how to care for
them.
A TV plugged into the mains will not operate if only 12 volt rather than
110 volt is available on the mains. To make an inattentive dynamical
quality spontaneous again requires a sufficient increase in free energy.
It is impossible to obtain an increase in free energy, even insufficient,
without making changes. If a person knows that he/she has certain
dynamical qualities which have become inattentive (non-spontaneous), then
that person has to make some changes, otherwise nothing will happen.
However, change itself will not lead to a sufficient increase. As Senge
might have said it, the change must have a dance.
Dynamical qualities such as learning, leading and caring can become
inattentive. Thus one side can easily claim that SOME persons do not have
such dynamical qualities. But what they fail to articulate from their
tacit knowledge, is that these dynamical properties are inattentive
because of a lack of free energy. Do they not know intuively that water
cannot flow spontaneously up the hill?
Dynamical qualities have to emerge before they can be actual rather than
virtual.. Thus the other side can easily claim that ALL persons have such
dynamical qualities. But what they fail to articulate from their tacit
knowledge, is that a virtual entity can only become actual by way of an
emergence. Do they not intuitively know that flowering plants cannot set
bloom unless the preceding flowering buds emerge?
The problem has been solved.
Have you managed to understand the solution of this antagonising problem
of conflicting opnions? Thirty years ago I would not have understood it
myself. Fifteen years ago I would have followed its solution, but would
not have been able to solve it myself. Why? If some smaller parts of the
truth have not yet emerged, how can a bigger part of the whole truth
emerge without them? Truth can only emerge through creative learning.
Setting up conflicts between different parts of the truth is a risky
business. It is necessary to produce chaos. But the chaos can lead into
destructive immergences rather than constructive emergences if we are not
careful.
You can progress in your understanding like me. I had much help from many
books from all ages. It will make me happy to help you as these books have
helped me to grow in understanding. Point out what part of the solution
baffles you and try to explain why it does so. I will try to explain it
again, using you explanation as the context.
The following is an afterthought on the recent introspection of the list
by fellow learners. Those of you who understand the action of the
Digestor, will realise how much the introspection had to do with
questioning the present organisation on the list. I do not want to make my
own analysis known. But I burn to say the following:
I think its is most crazy for people to switch off their creativity for
whatever reason, freely or compulsory. Its far crazier than buying a very
expensive TV set and then never switch it on, utilising the free energy of
the electricity supply. The effort which we have put in the emergence of
our creativity and all its dynamical qualities since our days as a baby is
not worth it. These spiritual tools are priceless.
There will always be SOME people who try to sell the idea that these
priceless spiritual tools have to be chopped up so as to make their
innumerous pieces more valuable. They can sell their idea, but not ALL
people will fall for it. Nobody can sell something priceless. Fragmenting
it does not make it affordable. Take care not to fragment your learning.
Best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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